Surrender, Loss, Victory
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: Victoire is the oldest Weasley child. People assume that she's already won. She thinks rather differently. Victoire-centric drabbles for the Victoire Weasley month of Twelve Months of NextGen on the Next-Gen Fanatics Forum.
1. Aren't You a Pretty One?

Author's Notes: Written for the Victoire Weasley month of Twelve Months of Next-Gen at the NextGen Fanatics Forum.

This shall be a series of unrelated Victoire-centric drabbles/ficlets/one-shots/whatever. I have no idea how many of them it shall include – however many I can finish in June.

Enjoy!

* * *

_Aren't You a Pretty One?_

)O(

"Aren't you a pretty one, Victoire?"

Victoire forced a small smile, looking up at her grandmother with the same sickeningly sweet expression that she used any time anyone told her that she was a pretty one. She _despised_ it, because every person in the world seemed to think that it was a wonderful compliment, and the only one that they could give her.

_For God's sake, even _that's a nice skirt, Victoire_ would be better._

"Thank you, Grand-mére ," Victoire said politely. She perched on the edge of the couch, smiling sweetly while they turned to her mother and started to speak in rapid French.

Victoire had never learned French.

She allowed her eyes to glaze over, even as she kept her posture straight and her face forced into the delicate mask of politely restrained happiness that she wore so often. She clenched her hands into fists so that she would not fidget.

Maybe she ought to cut her hair short, the way Dominique had, she reflected. But that wouldn't solve anything. It wasn't her long hair that made her pretty, or her straight nose or curvy figure or nice, clear skin. Hell, if that was what made someone pretty, then Victoire wasn't even _close_ to being the prettiest girl in Hogwarts.

No, it was the damned Veela blood.

The Veela blood that stopped anyone from seeing anything besides that she looked nice.

Out of the seven boys that Victoire had considered boyfriends, not a single one of them had ever shown much interest in anything outside her looks. She had shown them her (not very good) paintings, and they had said that they were almost as pretty as her. She had played the piano for them (not very well) and they had said she looked gorgeous when she played.

She _didn't_ even look very nice.

But Victoire couldn't say that – much less tell people to stop calling her pretty – or people would think that she was one of those girls who said that she wasn't pretty to fish for compliments… people would think that she was ungrateful.

And she was.

She was ungrateful, because being pretty was a very stupid thing to act as a single defining trait.

And so she did her best to block out Grand-mére's voice when she said that Victoire was pretty, and imagined that she was saying _Aren't you an interesting one, Victoire_ instead.

)O(

_Fin_


	2. Carnival Girl

_Carnival Girl_

)O(

When Victoire was nine, Bill and Fleur took her to a carnival.

They left her to wander around by herself, letting her drift between grotesque groups of clowns and children who didn't know how to be quiet. Victoire cast disdainful looks at them all, thinking how immature they were, but tears welled in her eyes when their parents ushered them away.

Her parents didn't come for her.

Darkness was falling, and Victoire stood silent in the centre of the whole affair, listening to tinny music and watching garish lights spin before her eyes, and she had never felt so alone.


	3. Venom and Poison

_Venom and Poison_

)O(

It is a well-known fact that men love danger.

They love a fight or a hunt or a challenge. And they love it in all things, but in romance most of all. A woman who is a danger will always have an added allure that no safe woman could have.

Victoire was, she knew, not a dangerous woman, and she rarely cared, for she did not want men to fall over themselves for her. They were a nuisance, and the fewer of them she was forced to deal with, the better for her.

But when she did want to become a danger, she could do it far, far more effectively than even she cared to admit. She could, in minutes, transform from a pretty if sullen failing artist into the _femme fatale _that any man desired. She knew almost instinctively just how to speak, how to look at them, how to _be_ to make them sick with desire for her.

It was desire that she never fulfilled. She only drew them along until they were half-crazed and then she dropped them and resumed her life as sweet, _simple_ Victoire and left them with only half-formed memories of wanting her so desperately and no idea why they had, only that she had all but destroyed them.

Men always said that Victoire was poisonous, that she would kill your soul with a smile or a kiss, and that she was a danger that should be avoided. But when she was not trying to be, when they looked at her, they could never see what they had been so afraid of.

She was just a sweet girl with a dash of Veela blood, after all.

Yes, Victoire thought, she was just a girl with a dash of Veela blood.

But not so sweet.

)O(

_Fin_


End file.
